Advice on bringing a broken antique back to life

scarysamcary

scarysamcary

Joined
Jul 28, 2020
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I do a lot of work with antiques, but rarely get them in poor enough condition to justify using my 'limited' skills on them. Luckily I was just gifted an antique Dha blade whose tang had rusted to the point of breaking off. there was also significant damage to the blade just above the tang, so I just ground a new tang in (making sure to avoid damaging the temper)



With the tang mostly complete, now I have to deal with the edge/tip damage and making a fresh handle. The issue I face now is how do I gently re-profile the blade without taking off too much steel? The edge geometry is impressive on this old piece and I don't want to blunt it too much before putting on the new edge. Should I leave some minor nicks and keep it as close to the original as possible? Or, having already ground in a new tang, should I just go all the way and make a 'new' Dha from the remains of the old one?



Also any tips/advice on making a new handle would be greatly appreciated! I always struggle at making
 
Well judging by the poor condition of the piece to begin with, and having to grind a new tang it doesn't make much difference what you do to it at this point. If it were me, I would spend as little time on it as possible. I would just clean the blade up, hone it, you may never get all the rust damage out of it anyhow. then I would slot a simple brass guard and epoxy a wooden handle on it and be done with it.
 
Maybe soak it in naval jelly, then light rust removal with wire brush wheel or scotchbrite, and call it patina.
 
I went with Scott Hanson's advice and went very minimally.
A quick clean up job and reprofile left me with a decent blade.




I'm out of brass at the moment, so I will just leave it as a peasant style piece. slapping on some sort of simple wood handle, profile it to look like a dha grip, and do a simple leather wrap to finish.
I always take too long to do my handles, but hopefully I will be back with the finished product in a day or so.
 
It’s looking good that’s exactly what I was thinking.
 
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